Saturday in the Park

Song Review
by Stewart Mason

Chicago's eighth Top 40 single and their biggest hit until "If You Leave Me Now" gave them their first number one four years later, 1972's agreeably sunny "Saturday in the Park" has remained one of the perennial summer singles in the decades since its release. Written and sung by keyboardist Robert Lamm and showing off the group's three-man horn section to its best advantage, "Saturday in the Park" was probably the most straightforward pop song Chicago had produced up to this point. Although their chart success suggests otherwise, as does the increasingly schlocky series of adult contemporary hits that would later become synonymous with the brand name, Chicago actually had a fairly experimental streak in them for their first several albums. The success of "Saturday in the Park," with its conversational lyrics and thoroughly conventional pop melody, meant that the jazz fusion and classical rock experiments of the band's first few records -- ponderous and artistically unsuccessful though they often were -- would be curtailed in the future. Sadly, the creative slide to the faceless power ballad years of "You're the Inspiration" was in the cards from here on out. Somewhat surprisingly, magpie hip-hop trio De La Soul quite effectively turned samples of "Saturday in the Park" into the partial basis for their 1991 hit "A Roller-Skating Jam Called Saturdays."